[Music]
[Applause]
pakistan’s educational problems can be
fixed
does that sound too good to be true I am
here to share with you a journey of how
we developed a model that specifically
addresses real needs on the ground a
practical model that provides a solution
to every educational problem we faced
along the way this model has already
been replicated in nine schools and we
hope to extend it to many more so let’s
take a look at our story the challenges
we faced and how we overcame them these
challenges correspond to the main issues
we see in Pakistani education today I
focused on the top five issues only and
the first issue of course is access 25
million children in Pakistan are out of
school most of these children live in
rural and peri-urban areas with schools
located at a distance so the need was to
set up a school in a village so we set
up a school in a village our first
school based on this model this was in
hundred Isle village outside Lahore this
was in August 2014
however distance is just one dimension
of access price is another there may be
a good school nearby but many people
can’t afford to pay the fee so the need
was for a good school with an affordable
fee now what is affordable may be
different for you and me so we designed
a sliding fee structure where parents of
varying financial backgrounds could pay
whatever they could afford parents with
limited means also receives
incentives like free books stationery
and free uniforms and the best part is
all the children sit under the same roof
in the same classroom and get the same
quality education regardless of how much
they’ve paid so that’s a lesson in
social harmony right there the second
issue is quality a low cost education
shouldn’t mean a low quality education
so we looked around and the textbooks
that were currently available on the
market we felt didn’t really meet the
needs of our students we needed a
textbook that would help a child learn
with very little help available at home
to support the child’s learning
so we developed our own books these are
high quality low cost syllabus books the
response on the books was excellent as
teachers felt that they helped the
children learn in a systematic way
through activity-based learning to check
whether students were learning or not we
also implemented a system of centralized
assessment three times a year so two and
two term exams and one annual exam to
teach the syllabus effectively you need
good teachers so we developed our
teacher training program you see all of
our teachers are hired from that same
village or community they come in with a
lack of training and exposure limited
knowledge and a reliance on rote
learning but they have a whole lot of
heart we take them through a gradual
program of continuous professional
development one workshop every month for
one year
at the end of that year they become
really effective teachers thankfully
many of our teachers choose to stay with
us for a long time as they find an
atmosphere of appreciation and growth
the third issue is monitoring how to
ensure educational standards in schools
located in far off places our model has
a specialized remote school management
and monitoring system we call it the
reach program it uses simple
applications of technology that are
available on any mobile phone or
smartphone we’ve developed a system of
checks and balances and we monitor each
aspect of the school sitting right here
in the city
first of all we developed a monthly
schedule of activities for each school
to follow these activities cover all the
things that should go on in a good
school for it to run properly on the
given date the school head does the
prescribed activity and she fills in a
standardized form by hand then she takes
a picture of the form using her mobile
phone and she sends it to us on whatsapp
at our head office we have people
sitting in our data center who compile
all the forms coming in they sort them
into folders and they email them out to
our specialists sitting in different
cities we have specialists for academics
training school management and many
other disciplines they study the data
coming in from the branches and take
corrective action our team members also
hold weekly Skype sessions with school
heads to provide them necessary guidance
and support by the way a lot of our
training also takes place via Skype and
mobile based conference calls we’ve also
developed a special Android application
that marks attend
of students and teachers and saves it to
a web based database viewable in real
time all this is possible through a rich
program specifically developed for
educational quality management of
schools located in remote areas the
fourth issue we keep hearing about is a
general lack of community involvement
and awareness when it comes to education
as part of our model we’ve developed a
full calendar of community outreach
events and activities such as
parent-teacher meetings enrollment
drives free medical camps disaster
relief training parents days sports day
plant a seed and many others the parent
attendance rate at our parent-teacher
meetings is 80%
we also counsel students parents family
and community members counseling is very
important to make sure students stay in
school the fifth and final issue is
sustainability how do you make sure that
the school goes on forever and doesn’t
run into financial troubles well look
around you schools are doing booming
business if a school has a good academic
standard over time it develops a certain
reputation and name for itself people
are willing to spend good money to send
their children to that school remember
we’ve already put in the sliding fee
structure to cater to the affordability
issue now we just need to keep providing
a quality education to keep everyone
satisfied so that’s what we plan to do
Sunbeam school system is a
professionally managed low-cost network
of privately run schools we commit to
maintaining academic standards in the
schools using all the
methods that I just talked about we are
a registered nonprofit and a social
enterprise we collect donations to set
up a school and run it for the first two
to three years once the school is
established and has a strength of 200
students it will pay for itself there is
no need for any further funding this is
a sustainable solution for providing
quality education to all it is also the
best example of set Kataria the gift
that keeps on giving here I’d like to
share with you our financial model in
which you can see that the income and
the expenditure of a school meet after
three years after this time the school
will pay for itself lastly I would like
to say that this is an indigenous model
that we have developed in Pakistan
through a team of highly experienced
educationists it is a multi-layered
model and there are many models many
layers that I haven’t even talked about
yet each layer addresses a specific set
of problems and together they make a
holistic solution for every educational
problem that we faced along the way this
is our humble contribution to the
progress and prosperity of our nation I
want to impress upon you that we didn’t
have a lot of money we’ve received no
money from government or any donor
agency but if you have a will and a
desire you must act I will just say that
good things follow when you put your
ideas into practice I use some of my own
money to start the first model and set
up the first school
when you can see the results visible on
the ground then you can show them to
people and they also want to get
involved but if you never start then
there’s a whole lot of goodwill and
desires and intention but nothing
concrete comes out of it so you have to
start somewhere
starting from that first school in 2014
we are now running nine schools in
Lahore Islamabad crucial Okara
antibiotics Inc mashallah we are also
helping other organizations facing
challenges similar to ours such as
government schools and madrasah schools
we are educating 1,300 children and
training almost 100 teachers we hope to
expand this model and scale it up to
reach many more underserved communities
in Pakistan the model is doing very well
mashaallah school results are excellent
student attendance rates are near 90%
student results in government word exams
are usually 100 percent and this this is
the qualitative change we are bringing
to our children look at the spark in her
eye the confidence manners and
discipline we feel we are changing the
face of Education in Pakistan this is
what gives us hope that yes change is
possible that there is no mountain too
high no Valley so steep that the light
of learning cannot penetrate through
please help us and support us by taking
the cause of Education forward spread
the light
let’s do it thank you
[Applause]
you
[Applause]
pakistan’s educational problems can be
fixed
does that sound too good to be true I am
here to share with you a journey of how
we developed a model that specifically
addresses real needs on the ground a
practical model that provides a solution
to every educational problem we faced
along the way this model has already
been replicated in nine schools and we
hope to extend it to many more so let’s
take a look at our story the challenges
we faced and how we overcame them these
challenges correspond to the main issues
we see in Pakistani education today I
focused on the top five issues only and
the first issue of course is access 25
million children in Pakistan are out of
school most of these children live in
rural and peri-urban areas with schools
located at a distance so the need was to
set up a school in a village so we set
up a school in a village our first
school based on this model this was in
hundred Isle village outside Lahore this
was in August 2014
however distance is just one dimension
of access price is another there may be
a good school nearby but many people
can’t afford to pay the fee so the need
was for a good school with an affordable
fee now what is affordable may be
different for you and me so we designed
a sliding fee structure where parents of
varying financial backgrounds could pay
whatever they could afford parents with
limited means also receives
incentives like free books stationery
and free uniforms and the best part is
all the children sit under the same roof
in the same classroom and get the same
quality education regardless of how much
they’ve paid so that’s a lesson in
social harmony right there the second
issue is quality a low cost education
shouldn’t mean a low quality education
so we looked around and the textbooks
that were currently available on the
market we felt didn’t really meet the
needs of our students we needed a
textbook that would help a child learn
with very little help available at home
to support the child’s learning
so we developed our own books these are
high quality low cost syllabus books the
response on the books was excellent as
teachers felt that they helped the
children learn in a systematic way
through activity-based learning to check
whether students were learning or not we
also implemented a system of centralized
assessment three times a year so two and
two term exams and one annual exam to
teach the syllabus effectively you need
good teachers so we developed our
teacher training program you see all of
our teachers are hired from that same
village or community they come in with a
lack of training and exposure limited
knowledge and a reliance on rote
learning but they have a whole lot of
heart we take them through a gradual
program of continuous professional
development one workshop every month for
one year
at the end of that year they become
really effective teachers thankfully
many of our teachers choose to stay with
us for a long time as they find an
atmosphere of appreciation and growth
the third issue is monitoring how to
ensure educational standards in schools
located in far off places our model has
a specialized remote school management
and monitoring system we call it the
reach program it uses simple
applications of technology that are
available on any mobile phone or
smartphone we’ve developed a system of
checks and balances and we monitor each
aspect of the school sitting right here
in the city
first of all we developed a monthly
schedule of activities for each school
to follow these activities cover all the
things that should go on in a good
school for it to run properly on the
given date the school head does the
prescribed activity and she fills in a
standardized form by hand then she takes
a picture of the form using her mobile
phone and she sends it to us on whatsapp
at our head office we have people
sitting in our data center who compile
all the forms coming in they sort them
into folders and they email them out to
our specialists sitting in different
cities we have specialists for academics
training school management and many
other disciplines they study the data
coming in from the branches and take
corrective action our team members also
hold weekly Skype sessions with school
heads to provide them necessary guidance
and support by the way a lot of our
training also takes place via Skype and
mobile based conference calls we’ve also
developed a special Android application
that marks attend
of students and teachers and saves it to
a web based database viewable in real
time all this is possible through a rich
program specifically developed for
educational quality management of
schools located in remote areas the
fourth issue we keep hearing about is a
general lack of community involvement
and awareness when it comes to education
as part of our model we’ve developed a
full calendar of community outreach
events and activities such as
parent-teacher meetings enrollment
drives free medical camps disaster
relief training parents days sports day
plant a seed and many others the parent
attendance rate at our parent-teacher
meetings is 80%
we also counsel students parents family
and community members counseling is very
important to make sure students stay in
school the fifth and final issue is
sustainability how do you make sure that
the school goes on forever and doesn’t
run into financial troubles well look
around you schools are doing booming
business if a school has a good academic
standard over time it develops a certain
reputation and name for itself people
are willing to spend good money to send
their children to that school remember
we’ve already put in the sliding fee
structure to cater to the affordability
issue now we just need to keep providing
a quality education to keep everyone
satisfied so that’s what we plan to do
Sunbeam school system is a
professionally managed low-cost network
of privately run schools we commit to
maintaining academic standards in the
schools using all the
methods that I just talked about we are
a registered nonprofit and a social
enterprise we collect donations to set
up a school and run it for the first two
to three years once the school is
established and has a strength of 200
students it will pay for itself there is
no need for any further funding this is
a sustainable solution for providing
quality education to all it is also the
best example of set Kataria the gift
that keeps on giving here I’d like to
share with you our financial model in
which you can see that the income and
the expenditure of a school meet after
three years after this time the school
will pay for itself lastly I would like
to say that this is an indigenous model
that we have developed in Pakistan
through a team of highly experienced
educationists it is a multi-layered
model and there are many models many
layers that I haven’t even talked about
yet each layer addresses a specific set
of problems and together they make a
holistic solution for every educational
problem that we faced along the way this
is our humble contribution to the
progress and prosperity of our nation I
want to impress upon you that we didn’t
have a lot of money we’ve received no
money from government or any donor
agency but if you have a will and a
desire you must act I will just say that
good things follow when you put your
ideas into practice I use some of my own
money to start the first model and set
up the first school
when you can see the results visible on
the ground then you can show them to
people and they also want to get
involved but if you never start then
there’s a whole lot of goodwill and
desires and intention but nothing
concrete comes out of it so you have to
start somewhere
starting from that first school in 2014
we are now running nine schools in
Lahore Islamabad crucial Okara
antibiotics Inc mashallah we are also
helping other organizations facing
challenges similar to ours such as
government schools and madrasah schools
we are educating 1,300 children and
training almost 100 teachers we hope to
expand this model and scale it up to
reach many more underserved communities
in Pakistan the model is doing very well
mashaallah school results are excellent
student attendance rates are near 90%
student results in government word exams
are usually 100 percent and this this is
the qualitative change we are bringing
to our children look at the spark in her
eye the confidence manners and
discipline we feel we are changing the
face of Education in Pakistan this is
what gives us hope that yes change is
possible that there is no mountain too
high no Valley so steep that the light
of learning cannot penetrate through
please help us and support us by taking
the cause of Education forward spread
the light
let’s do it thank you
[Applause]
you
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